


who pushed the shutter

by verity



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen, Memory Loss, notebooks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-14
Updated: 2016-03-14
Packaged: 2018-05-26 18:14:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6250261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/verity/pseuds/verity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>At first, he just wrote three things over and over:<br/>—REBECCA<br/>—MONTAGUE<br/>—MENTHOL</p><p>Whatever they were, they must have been important.</p>
            </blockquote>





	who pushed the shutter

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lazulisong](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lazulisong/gifts).



> inspired by [sebastian stan's comments about bucky's backpack](http://uncensoredsideblog.tumblr.com/post/141027119402/source).

"We keep him on a short leash," someone says. "He doesn't do well on long assignments. A week, max."

Someone else says, "That's fine. We can do enough with that."

—

Two months out, he's laughing. A group of tourists gives him a wide berth as they stream out of Grant's Tomb toward Riverside Park and the city. He's sitting on the steps while the afternoon light dies and he can't stop laughing, face pressed into the palms of his hands. He can't remember what's so funny. He can't remember why he decided to come here. That's okay, though—he gasps for breath—because he doesn't have to remember. He planned for this, after all.

Maybe that's what's so funny.

—

The notebook doesn't say whether this is a safe house or a house that's safe, but that's okay. The kitchen cabinets hold a month's worth of canned provisions, the safe is stocked with weapons and ammunition ( _221163_ —someone's birthday?), and the wardrobe in the bedroom has clothing in an array of sizes. He showers and puts his pants and jacket back on over clean underwear and a soft knit shirt that stinks of cedar. Then he lies on the double bed and stares up at the place where the walls terminate in shadow. Sometimes light gives him headaches. His vision blurs. That means his body requires rest.

First, though, he takes out a notebook. Not the one with the address—that one is old, the pages yellowing—but the newest one, which still has blank pages. He writes the date, the time, the address. _Do not return to base._ The note above this one has a different address. _Proceed to MTL. Do not return to base._ Further up, there are more instructions. The crabbed handwriting hurts his eyes; he shoves the book away. He used to have beautiful penmanship.

Before, he could stay awake forever, or as long as forever lasted. He could endure. That's why he was so valuable. He doesn't need the notebooks to tell him that. First in, last out. A lot of the old things, he remembers.

—

"Steve," he says. "Hey. Stevie."

He dragged Steve out of the water without knowing his name. He remembered his face. The museum filled in some gaps. He used to have a name, but it wasn't in the notebooks. It wasn't important.

"You recognize me?" Steve says. Staring.

Bucky says, "Someone hit you on the head, Rogers?"

"Not in my bed in the middle of the night, no," Steve says.

Bucky shrugs; Steve can probably see it. They have the same adaptations, mostly—eyesight, metabolism, strength, healing. Resilience. "Okay." He moves back toward the open window. Steve has white curtains, heavy and stiff with starch; in the light breeze, they barely flutter. "Just checking in."

"Wait, what?"

He's already halfway out the window.

—

There's a hand-drawn map of HYDRA facilities all over the globe. It's old. The date says, _1980_. There are later additions—scratch-outs, highlights, none of those with dates. He reads through the notebooks again and again, on bus rides, on chartered flights, on the boat he sails along the Croatian coastline. They don't make a lot of sense. Sometimes he wrote out of order. Just what the weather was like, no date, no mention of the mission. He can't match half the entries to events, but if he did it right, it was like he was never there.

If he does this right, it won't be like he was never there. He'll forget, but he'll write it down.

—

At first, he just wrote three things over and over:  
—REBECCA  
—MONTAGUE  
—MENTHOL

Whatever they were, they must have been important.

—

Sometimes people try to talk to him in transit. He used to tune them out on purpose, but now he loses track without trying. Paying attention is too much effort when he's already struggling to stay focused. To hang onto his backpack, his memory, his mission, this one mission that's his own.

He's no good with people, anyway. He forgets the right words to say. Sometimes, the actual words. Maybe this is the beginning of the end, the real end, when everything will finally go. He has to hurry. There's never enough time to get things done.

He drags the bodies back into the building—one of them moans when its head smacks against the doorjamb—douses the floor with gasoline, blocks the doors. Lights a match. Waits for the scent of the air to turn from acrid to sweet before he crosses another place off his map.

—

"You're going to get caught," the woman next to him on the uptown 1 train says softly. She always looks the same, even though she always looks different. Her name doesn't matter, either.

"Maybe," he says. "What will they do if they catch me?"

"They won't kill you here," she says in Russian. "This is a civilized country. They're not so kind."

He gets off at the next stop, the one by the market with the nice candy. He picks out a chocolate bar by the wrapper, texture paper that's slightly corrugated. The chocolate itself is seasoned with red pepper and salt: it doesn't taste very good, but he eats it anyway. He grew up on five-cent Hershey bars, breaking off chunks and letting them melt in his mouth to stretch them out. Gritty sugar and fat melting on his tongue. The first flush of summer. Brooklyn and the big park, Ma making them hold hands as they walked, then making them share. The pepper in this chocolate burns his tongue. They have Hershey bars in the future, but they're not the same.

He walks up Broadway, ten blocks, another ten. Turns toward the river and Grant's Tomb. He starts laughing as he crosses Riverside Drive. What's so funny? Jesus, he can't remember. He hoists the backpack up on his shoulders and bites his lip hard enough to draw blood. Another laugh breaks free of him. Something is funny. Somewhere in here, there's a joke.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks to lazulisong, memory care profesh, for her guidance. she suggested that bucky's situation is probably closer to vascular dementia/post-concussion symptom than alzheimers, so that's what I based this on. any errors are my own.


End file.
